Penny Dreadful
by Victory in Chains
Summary: In which my Lady Potter is kidnapped by my Lord Malfoy. Will virtue forsake our heroine? Or shall my Lord Potter venomously victimize the villainous varlet in a verbose and vicious victory?


Our Heroine and Our Villain in a carriage

"My life has become a gothic penny dreadful," she mused.

"Oh, do shut up," her companion grumbled.

"Hush, my Lord Malfoy," she chided. Her companion fingered his wand and glared at her with incredulity. "I have been thrust into a sack, bundled into a carriage, and absconded with along the Great North Road."

"That doesn't make your life a gothic penny dreadful," he drawled.

"Of course it does," she cried. "Just look! I've become dramatic and and…" her hands fluttered about her bosom, "and I can't think of an appropriate second adjective." She visibly wilted in the carriage seat.

"Lady Potter," he smirked, "If your vocabulary is faltering, I have a number of adjectives which I can apply to your person."

"Hush again," she ordered. "An abduction is no excuse for bad manners."

"Did you seriously just say that?"

"No, I satirically just said that," she countered.

"How about we NOT apply literary criticism to your kidnapping," he offered.

"Kidnapping!" she exclaimed, "Come now. Such pedestrian language. Surely you can apply a more… florid vocabulary."

"Unlike you, **Pamela** , I have not quite decided that I've been appropriated by a gothic novel," he countered (1).

"Really now? What did you have in mind then?" she asked. "We have a carriage, the Great North Road, an abduction-"

"You used abduction already," he interrupted.

"I've not got a thesaurus handy!" she pouted at him. "And let me finish!" she ordered, giving him the evil eye. Malfoy made a magnanimous, sweeping gesture with one hand, and she nodded regally.

"A kidnapping," she continued, "the silent and fiercely loyal manservant, it's even thunderstorming at night! Of course it's a gothic penny dreadful."

"The crumbling, haunted castle appears to be missing," he suggested.

"Isn't that why we're on the Great North Road? You're taking me to Hogwarts, of course," she countered.

"I am not…" he began, blinking at her in confusion, "Why on earth would you believe that?"

"It's as you said," she answered primly, "the crumbling, haunted castle is missing."

"I am not absconding with…" he cut himself off in disgust. "Now you've got me doing it!" He peered at her suspiciously. "Are you certain you're not Luna Lovegood polyjuiced as Lady Potter?"

"Stop that!" she insisted, smacking his arm with her handbag. "Now you've gone and established a timeline," she pouted. "You're not supposed to establish such a concrete setting, now the audience can place us too closely.

"There will be griping and moaning," she warned ominously, backed by a conveniently timed clap of thunder, "about how 'that's not what **really** happened.'"

"Unlike you," her captor countered, "I remain unconvinced that I am a character in a gothic novel."

"Perhaps you're right," she acknowledged.

"I am?" Lord Malfoy sat straighter in surprise.

"Mayhap," she answered airily.

"Why would you change your mind so suddenly?" he asked with suspicion.

"Oh, because this is certainly a swashbuckling adventure," she grinned.

"What?"

"My Lord brother has caught up with us, disabled your driver, and is about to thrash you," she answered cheerfully.

"Wha-" A fist smashed through the carriage window, grabbed Lord Malfoy by the cravat, and hauled him out of the carriage and flung him to the earth.

"Now, Lord Malfoy," a dark figure intoned, "we shall discuss the location of your hidden rebel base."

"Albus!" Lily Luna Potter exclaimed, as laughter erupted on all sides. "You're ruining our show!"

"And I am NOT Princess Leia," Scorpius Malfoy insisted.

"Hush, the pair of you," Albus ordered over the snickers of the audience. "I can **finally** do the James Earl Jones voice without cracking. It's our moment of triumph!"

"I think you overestimate your chances," countered his elder brother from the ground.

"All right," laughed their father. "You've gone completely off the rails. Take your bows."

 **A/N:** I was watching Shrek 2 last night and Jennifer Saunders covering Bonnie Tyler is the awesomest thing in the universe. The Lady Potter kidnapped in a Carriage by Malfoy being chased by Lord Potter grabbed me during it and wouldn't let go. And then of course it turned into the Potter-Weasley-Malfoy kids being ridiculous.

1\. Malfoy is alluding to Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded.


End file.
